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I who have attained all life,
now ask still further joy:
For what is sovereignty that turns aside from pleasure,
what is power that it may stand still and rest content? Having flown from flesh to spirit,
and from spirit to flesh,
having laughed at death,
should I not rejoice even in the realm
where flesh and death prevail?
Turned invincible, I may ascend upon
my conquered lands and claim my spoil.
Where I have lived before, fixed to earth,
I now may live again:
Thus, with new strength,
like the long vine that hangs upon the tree of life,
I wind my wisdom home again
and seize what I have won.
Night shall be my drinking hall,
no longer held by death and his dull minions:
Crowd them out, those joyless hordes who will not laugh,
And pour the wine of victory!
As I have conquered blood,
Now the crimson joy I shall enjoy!

I am the living goddess, heaven, hell, and earth are mine:
Let me then possess all kingdoms
better than I knew before,
let me learn to do now as I please.
For even sun has weakened now, his zenith fails,
his gold meridian sinks and falters down the air,
and he is lord of what has been, not of what is.
But I am the Dark Lady of everywhere:
I rule the darkness and the light,
and will do what I will.
The tree of life, that tree borne of sun,
I uphold thee where I grasp the vines
And takes thee limbs as prisoner.
All things I hold
And I shall not release the branches full of purple fruit
Until I have been filled:
I fill, I swell, I am the purple of the deepest rose,
The purple of the royal vine, now filled with sweet dark wine
and grown as great as all the whole great universe–
Its infinite purple fruit, its darkest flower ripe,
its heavy petals folded full about the sun’s gold heart.
Let me swallow the sun, whole, in my universal orb,
myself the cosmic purple globe where lo!
The sun has shrunk to nothing but a silver seed.
Lo! I have swallowed up the sun, and I expand,
I now encompass all, and all, and all.

Let me glorify my flesh,
let me celebrate my bounty
and the sweetness of my flowering.
For I am yet the flowering of all the universe,
yea, even so I am its flesh and blood and fruit.
Who shall stay my hands when they would act,
and who shall starve my mouth when I would feast upon the ruby nectar?
I have always lived, and none may call me mortal:
Save for the dry and lipless mouth of death,
but where is death?
I see him not, I recognize him not.
Even if he should gnaw the root beneath the earth,
even while he gnaws the hidden root
that binds the tree of sun to earth,
the tree of sun where in I climb and feast on life,
even while he gnaws the root and starves the vein,
the fruit is mine: and lo!
I see him not, neither am I blind.
It is but dark wine that veils my eyes, and dark wine is life,
I only drink what is my own:
Wherefore should it blind me?
I see myself, and this shall be enough of sight.
For O, sweet, myself is sweet,
my every self as sweet as flowers and sweet dark fruit:
I hold the wine of all the great sweet universe,
And of this wine I drink,
I draw all sweetness from the tree of life.

Whose blood may then be drained?
Death’s blood alone,
and not the trees’ wherein I climb rejoicing.
Sweet, sweet, my own dark blood,
as I am filled with life.
Let me drink up sweetest life with my dark lips,
let me cleave unto the heart of life and suck its juice,
let me kiss the heart, the vein, the hand of life
whence all my highest sweetness springs.

Now I am marked with the wine and the blood,
now I am marked with the fruit and the flower,
now I am marked with my lust and my power.
So let my mark be a sign to death:
That my laughter is stronger than his mourning,
that my darkness is more radiant than the light,
that excess is nobler than abstinence,
that pride is stronger than meekness.
I shall not lie with death in the sober grave
while there is life with whom to lie,
and to drink, and to celebrate:
Better to lie upon earth, drunk with excess
with the glories of flesh and blood,
better to kiss and be marked by kisses of flowering ruby water,
even if they should wound me,
even if they should drain my veins to death-white ropes,
even if they betray me and deliver me
into the knotted bone-white bonds of death.

I drink the darkness.
I kiss the darkness of blood:
But call it never the darkness of death:
Call it the darkness of life,
I go forth, with open eyes, into the living darkness.